The Greek attitude towards homosexuality, as Plato indicates, was not characteristic of every society. Writers have generalized that the ancients accepted homosexuality simply because the Greeks and Romans did. Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley seems to think Egyptian (Kemetic) culture accepted homosexuality since people of the “ancient world” did not frown upon it. She and a number of Western writers share this opinion, while other scholars such as Sir E. Wallis Budge and Martin Bernal believe the contrary. However, unlike Greece, Rome, and the Western Asian societies of Mesopotamia, homosexuality is conspicuously absent in Kemet. Because of the central role of homosexuality in their past, Western Egyptologists in their efforts to connect Kemet with Western history, expect to find it in Kemet. When they fail to find sufficient evidence they either create it or distort the existing evidence. Any evidence they perceive as ambiguous, they consign to homosexual behavior. For example, Manniche claims that most of the ostrakons are ambiguous; however, of the ones she provides in her book, very few are ambiguous. Moreover, in Sacred Sexuality in Ancient Egypt, a few ostrakons are shown and many of images from the Erotic Papyrus of Turin the authors show, they are all depictions of men and women engaged in vaginal intercourse. On the other hand, the lack of data confirming homosexual practices in Kemet should not be surprising given the Afrikan worldview. The entire structure of Kemetic society indicates that the proper alignment for all relationship was based on the complementary interaction of masculine and feminine forces. In this worldview and cosmological schema homosexuality has no place. Throughout all their tombs and temple walls the Kemeyu art rarely show erotic scenes, as they have addressed sexual energy in its divine manifestation associated with life and fertility. Afrikans never exclude human sexual intercourse from its divine manifestation, the two are inseparable. Even in the period of cultural decline when limestone fragments of drawing called ostrakons appear and the art is directed at the baser aspects of human sexuality, there are still no scenes of anal, oral, or same-sex intercourse, behaviors usually associated with homosexuality. The data presented as evidence of its acceptance is fragile and more than anything else is a projection of the Western imagination. More burdensome than projection is the problem of interpretation. We will examine one case that various writers have offered as proof of homosexuality in Kemetic culture. However, it must be made clear the argument here, is that homosexuality was considered culturally unaccepted behavior and not that incidences of it never occurred in Kemetic society. They cite Kemetic mythology as evidence of the acceptance of homosexuality. One of the most important neteru in Kemet, Set, some contemporary writes have identified as homosexual. As evidence they offer: his depiction in different forms--sometimes as a gender-variant male; a variant in the mythology in which Set gives birth to Horus’ child; his attempt to rape/sodomize Heru; and his lack of a relationship with his wife Nebhet. Set’s depiction in different form is insufficient proof of his sexual preference or orientation. We must also reject the argument of his lack of a relationship to his wife as indicative of a lack of interest in women and therefore by default homosexual behavior, since there is another variant where he tries to have intercourse with Auset. Those that identify him as bisexual, are equally incorrect. Again, Western projections fail adequately to address the situation and we must term to Afrika for a suitable answer--Set, like all neteru, was twinned (androgynous). The principle of twinness applies to man as well as neter. Looking at other Afrikan cultures offer a clue to Set’s energy and role in Kemetic society. Various Egyptologists have called set a “trickster” deity, which allows us to cross-reference him with other Afrikan trickster deities. Eshu of the Yoruba will provide an excellent case in point. Though Westerner equate him with their “devil” or evil and he does deceive humanity, at the same time he is a “humble servant” to Oludumare (Supreme Being). (And Set after his final defeat and judgement by the Ennead becomes the faithful neter that propels Ra across the horizon). Eshu is rampantly sexual. His upward spike of iron often accompanying his icon serves as a phallic symbol. Though usually symbolized as a male, the actual Eshu shrine in Nigeria consist of both male and female Eshu–Eshu is twinned. He like Set, is highly sexual, twinned and more importantly, a devoted force of the Supreme Being. Thus, Set’s gender-variant identity is only a problem for those that do not understand the importance of twinness in Afrikan thought. To address the other aspects of Set and Heru’s relationship requires an examination of the myth. According to it, at one point in their epic struggle for the throne, Set invited Heru to his place of residence. During the night Set becomes erect and puts his member between Heru’s thighs. Heru put his hand between his legs and catches Set’s ejaculation. Upon Heru showing his mother Auset Set’s seed in his hand, she which she cries out, seizes his hand and cuts it off. She has Heru take out his member and produce his seed, which she takes to Set’s garden and places it on lettuce, his favorite vegetable. Set comes to the garden and eats the lettuce and unknowingly became pregnant with Heru’s seed. Hoping to defame Heru and deprive him of the throne, Set invites him to the Ennead tribunal where he tells them because of his act of aggression against his nephew, Heru has forfeited his claim to the throne, thus making him the rightful heir. The Ennead (the tribunal) spits in Heru’s face in disgust. Heru laughs informing the Ennead that Set has tricked them and that in truth Set has been impregnated by him. Once Tehuti reveals that Set is carrying Heru’s seed, the Ennead awards the throne to Heru. Any attempt to interpret Kemetic cosmology/mythology literally is doomed to fail. But even a literal and liberal interpretation would not result in the conclusion reached by overzealous writers. For example, since when does Set giving birth to Heru child qualify him as a homosexual? Moreover, Set’s attempted rape we must view as an act of aggression and not one of homosexual love. It was meant to dishonor Heru and not as an act affection. As we have seen in Kenyan society anal intercourse is considered rape, an act of aggression, as they identically perceived it in Kemet. Interestingly, even the intercourse in the myth was interfemoral and not pederastic, demonstrating the strong disapproval of that behavior in Afrika societies. Set’s behavior was disorderly and self-centered, behaviors that suggest his immaturity and unfitness to rule Kemet, therefore to treat him as a homosexual misses the symbolic meaning of him behavior and also to the chagrin of the homophiles, it casts the homosexual in an unfavorable light.

India Arie gave her honest opinions about this and other musical awards shows, which are focused mainly on awarding popularity and sales, but only concerned with musical quality as a complete afterthought.Writing on her tumblr page, Arie started off by stating that the “Music industry’s biggest night” is not what it’s cracked up to be: Though it’s called “Music industries biggest night” the #Grammys are NOT about the music, it’s a popularity contest. The voting process allows people, to vote on name recognition alone – the music industry politics is a whole NUTHER conversation. Too much to go into here.The American Music Awards is a show that awards sales and popularity – the #Grammys are SAID to be about the music. Arie, who is known for producing conscious and authentically black music, also says that the African American musical community loses when its best artists are not represented at the show every year. She says that this is a consistent pattern of denial and embarrassment toward the black musical community that simply should not be tolerated. NOW the BIGGER losers, are ALL of black music. Where was the black music community represented in last nights #Grammy show? Performers and Winners (or not) … Where were the black artists?And this isn’t the first time the #Grammy’s has had a show all but excluding young black America and black artists in general, although we set the worlds musical trends. Why NOT televise the lifetime achievement awards of the Isley Brothers? SURELY they deserved to be on televised stage LAST NIGHT! While other artists were on stage TWICE? Why don’t black artists simply boycott the Grammys? Answer: Because we still seek white acceptance and approval.Aries complaints about the Grammys are nothing new and have been around for 40 years. Is it time to do something or just keep getting upset because someone else is choosing not to acknowledge you? By the way, don't we have our own music awards show? Or is the white man's ice colder?

During his campaign for mayor, Bill de Blasio called for the city to settle a $250 million lawsuit brought by five men who had their convictions for raping a Central Park jogger in 1989 overturned. It now appears this settlement will happen. And that itself would be a miscarriage of justice, as The Post has maintained all along. This past week, a Manhattan federal judge put the lawsuit on hold, so new city Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter could reach a settlement with the Central Park 5. These men were originally convicted of beating and raping 29-year-old Trisha Meili based on confessions they made. Their convictions were overturned when another man, Matias Reyes, confessed to committing the crime and said he did so alone. Even so, the Bloomberg administration resisted intense political pressure to settle the lawsuit — and rightly so. Because there was too strong a case for the city to simply cut a huge check. Even members of then-DA Robert Morgenthau’s staff suggested he’d acted far too hastily and arbitrarily in vacating the convictions. A panel headed by famed anti-corruption prosecutor Michael Armstrong concluded that the five had “more likely than not” participated in the jogger attack — and certainly engaged in a violent series of “wilding” assaults in Central Park that night that left two other persons seriously injured. Moreover, the trial jury knew that no DNA evidence connected them to the crime. Indeed, they’d also been told another unknown assailant had taken part in the attack. And Reyes, who was never questioned under oath before the convictions were tossed, reportedly told a fellow inmate that “a group of kids” had attacked the jogger before he came along. The five, teenagers at the time, were convicted largely on the strength of their graphic and detailed confessions, which they later recanted but which were captured on videotape in the presence of their parents or guardians. Some repeated their confessions years later at parole hearings. And even Morgenthau himself concluded that, contrary to the five’s later allegations, there had been no coercion or misconduct in the way their confessions had been obtained. Ken Burns turned the case into a cause célèbre with his advocacy film on the case (his daughter had worked for the lawyers for the accused). The City Council also tried to up the ante by honoring the five. Against this public pressure, The Post stood virtually alone in opposing both the hasty overturning of their convictions and in making a huge cash settlement. They may well have been innocent of the Central Park jogger rape. But these are no innocent victims. And they don’t deserve the keys to the city treasury.

The enslavement of African people in the Americas by the nations and peoples of Western Europe, created the economic engine that funded modern capitalism. Therefore it comes as no surprise that most of the major corporations that were founded by Western European and American merchants prior to roughly 100 years ago, benefited directly from slavery.

1-Lehman Brothers, whose business empire started in the slave trade, recently admitted their part in the business of slavery. According to the Sun Times, the financial services firm acknowledged recently that its founding partners owned not one, but several enslaved Africans during the Civil War era and that, “in all likelihood,” it “profited significantly” from slavery. “This is a sad part of our heritage …We’re deeply apologetic … It was a terrible thing … There’s no one sitting in the United States in the year 2005, hopefully, who would ever, in a million years, defend the practice,” said Joe Polizzotto, general counsel of Lehman Brothers.2-Aetna, Inc., the United States’ largest health insurer, apologized for selling policies in the 1850s that reimbursed slave owners for financial losses when the enslaved Africans they owned died. “Aetna has long acknowledged that for several years shortly after its founding in 1853 that the company may have insured the lives of slaves,” said Aetna spokesman Fred Laberge in 2002. “We express our deep regret over any participation at all in this deplorable practice.”3-JPMorgan Chase recently admitted their company’s links to slavery. “Today, we are reporting that this research found that, between 1831 and 1865, two of our predecessor banks—Citizens Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana—accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved individuals as collateral on loans and took ownership of approximately 1,250 of them when the plantation owners defaulted on the loans,” the company wrote in a statement.4-New York Life Insurance Company is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States. They also took part in slavery by selling insurance policies on enslaved Africans. According to USA Today, evidence of 10 more New York Life slave policies comes from an 1847 account book kept by the company’s Natchez, Miss. agent, W.A. Britton. The book, part of a collection at Louisiana State University, contains Britton’s notes on slave policies he wrote for amounts ranging from $375 to $600. A 1906 history of New York Life says 339 of the company’s first 1,000 policies were written on the lives of slaves.

5-Wachovia. USA Today reported that Wachovia Corporation (now owned by Wells Fargo) has apologized for its ties to slavery after disclosing that two of its historical predecessors owned enslaved Africans and accepted them as payment. “On behalf of Wachovia Corporation, I apologize to all Americans, and especially to African-Americans and people of African descent,” said Ken Thompson, Wachovia chairman and chief executive officer, in the statement released late Wednesday. “We are deeply saddened by these findings.”6-N M Rothschild & Sons Bank in London was linked to slavery. The company that was one of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies. Documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed that Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, made his first personal gains by using enslaved Africans as collateral in dealings with a slave owner.7-Norfolk Southern also has a history in the slave trade. The Mobile & Girard company, which is now part of Norfolk Southern, offered slaveholders $180 ($3,379 today) apiece for enslaved Africans they would rent to the railroad for one year, according to the records. The Central of Georgia, another company aligned with Norfolk Southern Line today, valued its slaves at $31,303 ($663,033 today) on record.8-USA Today has found that their own parent company, E.W. Scripps and Gannett, has had links to the slave trade.

HaudenosauneeThe Iroquois also known as the Haudenosaunee, the Five Nations and Five Nations of the Iroquois (Six Nations after 1722) or calling themselves the Ganonsyoni, are a surviving and historically powerful important Native American people who formed the Iroquois Confederacy, a league of five (later six) distinct nations. French, Dutch and British colonists in both Canada and the Thirteen Colonies wanted to curry favor with the Iroquois; for nearly 200 years considerations of the Iroquois were a powerful factor in North American colonial policy-making decisions. There power was diminished after the Revolutionary War, when they sided with the British. After the defeat of the British most migrated to Canada and their descendants live there. In 1995, more than 50,000 enrolled Six Nations people lived in Canada, and about 30,000 in the United States.When Europeans first arrived in North America, the Haudenosaunee were based in what is now the northeastern United States, primarily in what is referred to today as upstate New York west of the Hudson River and through the Finger Lakes region. Each nation had a distinct territory and function within the League. Iroquois influence extended into Canada, westward into the Great Lakes and down both sides of the Allegheny mountains into Virginia and Kentucky. To reduce conflict, they came together in an association known today as the Iroquois League, which in their language was known as the League of Peace and Power. The League is embodied in the Grand Council, an assembly of fifty hereditary sachems.The Great Law of PeaceUnder the Iroquois Constitution, known as the Great Binding Law or Great Law of Peace, each nation elected delegates, or sachems, who dealt with internal affairs. The Confederacy’s Grand Council met to discuss matters of common concern, such as war, peace, and treaty-making. Though the Council could not interfere with the internal affairs of each tribe, unity for mutual defense was a central concept. The oral tradition of the Great Law uses the imagery of a bundle of five arrows tied together to symbolize the complete union of the nations and the unbroken strength that such unity imparts.

The Great Law also provided that policies would be thoroughly debated. First the Mohawks and Senecas, or Older Brothers, debated, and when they reached consensus, the Oneida and Cayuga, or Younger Brothers, debated. If the two “houses” disagreed, the Onondaga could cast the deciding vote. If the two houses agreed, the Onondaga would implement the unanimous decision, unless they disagreed with the decision and referred the matter back to the Council. If the Council again agreed upon their decision, the Onondaga were overruled. With its two houses and the veto power of a quasi-executive branch, this system was similar to the bicameral legislature and executive branch later found in our state and federal governments. Benjamin Franklin and the Albany PlanWhen an Indian interpreter and old friend of Benjamin Franklin’s brought him the official transcript of the proceedings, Franklin immediately published the account. Seven years later, he wrote a letter to James Parker, his New York City printing partner, on the importance of gaining and preserving the friendship of the Iroquois Indians. By the time Franklin wrote his letter to Parker, the American colonists had developed significant diplomatic and trading relations with American Indian societies, and for most of the 18th century, they had relatively friendly relations with the Iroquois, whose territory comprised a large part of what is now New York State. Today many historians believe that Iroquoian ideas of unity, federalism, and balance of power directly influenced the United States’ system of government. Among the founding fathers, Franklin may best illustrate the influence the Iroquois had on Americans. Franklin, who had a thriving printing business in Philadelphia, started printing small books containing proceedings of Indian treaty councils in 1736. They were the first distinctive forms of indigenous American literature and sold quite well, and he continued publishing such accounts until 1762. In 1744, envoys from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with delegates, or sachems, of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Indians. During the discussions, the Iroquois leader Canassatego advocated the federal union of the American colonies, exhorting the colonists:

Our wise forefathers established a union and amity between the [original] Five Nations. This has made us formidable. This has given us great weight and authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy and by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken you will acquire much strength and power; therefore, whatever befalls you, do not fall out with one another.

When an Indian interpreter and old friend of Benjamin Franklin’s brought him the official transcript of the proceedings, Franklin immediately published the account. Seven years later, he wrote a letter to James Parker, his New York City printing partner, on the importance of gaining and preserving the friendship of the Iroquois Indians.

Franklin carried the Iroquois concept of unity to Albany in 1754, where he presented his plan of union loosely patterned after the Iroquois Confederation. His “Short hints toward a scheme for uniting the northern colonies,” his Albany Plan proposed that each colony could govern its internal affairs and that a Grand Council consisting of a different number of representatives from each colony would provide for mutual defense. This proposed council closely resembled the Grand Council of the Iroquois nations. During the debates over the plan for union, Franklin pointed to the strength of the Iroquois Confederacy and stressed the fact that the individual nations of the Confederacy maintained internal sovereignty, managing their own internal affairs, without interference from the Grand Council. Arguing for a union of the colonies, he mused:

It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.

While the colonies and the Crown were not ready for a colonial union and the Albany Plan was not ratified, Franklin gained recognition as an advocate of colonial union and a place in history as an originator of the federalist system of government. Several Iroquois leaders had attended the Congress, convened at an Albany courthouse, to cement an alliance with the Iroquois against the French and to devise a plan for a union of the colonies. An aging Mohawk sachem called Hendrick received a special invitation from the acting governor of New York, James de Lancey, to attend the Congress and to provide information on the structure of the Iroquois government. After Hendrick spoke, DeLancey responded, “I hope that by this present Union, we shall grow up to a great height and be as powerful and famous as you were of old.”In an essay four decades later expressing unabashed admiration for the Iroquois, Franklin wrote: “Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility; they think the same of theirs.” In 1775, treaty commissioners from the Continental Congress met with the chiefs of the Six Nations “to inform you of the advice that was given about thirty years ago, by your wise forefathers.” While independence was debated by the Continental Congress, the visiting Iroquois chiefs were formally invited to attend. In 1787, John Rutledge, a member of the Constitutional Convention and chair of the drafting committee, used the structure of the Iroquois Confederacy as support for the proposition that political power comes from “we, the people,” an idea later expressed in the preamble to the Constitution.

Despite ongoing racial disparities in America, whites believe they are victims of racism more than blacks, a new study finds. According to the researchers, the study contradicts the notion of a "post-racial" society ushered in by President Barack Obama's election. "It's a pretty surprising finding when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show black Americans with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health and employment," study researcher Samuel Sommers, a psychologist at Tufts University, said in a statement. Sommers and his colleagues asked a nationwide sample of 208 blacks and 209 whites to complete questionnaires asking how much racial discrimination each group experienced from the 1950s onward. While both groups agreed on the amount of racial discrimination in the 50s, whites believe that racism against blacks decreased faster than blacks do. (Read: Rare Individuals Have No Racial Biases) The biggest difference, however, was that whites believe that anti-white bias has increased as anti-black bias has decreased. On average, the researchers found, whites rated anti-white racism as more prevalent in the 2000s than anti-black bias by more than a full point on a 10-point scale. Eleven percent of whites said whites are currently "very much" targets of discrimination, compared with 2 percent of blacks who said blacks are "very much" discrimination targets. The study suggests that whites see racial equality as a zero-sum game, in which one group wins at the other's expense. "These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality -- at their expense," Sommers and his colleagues wrote in May in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Nigerian-Cameroonian pop musician Dencia is quickly becoming the talk of social media networks and Nigerian blogs with the release of her “skin care” line Whitenicious. Whitenicious promises to help users rid themselves of pesky dark spots by gradually lightening the hyper-pigmented areas of their skin. However, from the looks of Dencia’s own skin, she’s been using it (or something more powerful) to transform her complexion from deep mahogany to vampire white. According to its website, Whitenicious (priced between $50-$150) is a “fast acting, 7 day dark spot remover” that is “a moisturizing cream enriched with powerful natural ingredients that will nourish your skin and lighten dark knuckles, knees and elbows.” Some Nigerian beauty blogs display before and after photos of Whitenicious users showing their once luminous dark skin transformed to milky white. “Skin toning,” as it’s called in Nigeria, is big business. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 77-percent of Nigerian women, the highest percentage in the world, use skin-lightening products on a regular basis. While some lighten their skin to adhere to a Western standard of beauty, many women bleach their skin because it affords them better marriage prospects and a greater chance at social mobility. Friend and Nigerian-American rapper Kingsley “Rukus” Okafor explains the obsession: “It’s hard to understand until you’ve been in the streets of an African nation,” he wrote in a comment on my Facebook page. “There’s a different treatment and desirability factor in Africa for lighter skinned women, well beyond what we experience in the US. It’s an epidemic. You can’t walk a day in the streets of Lagos without seeing someone who has/is bleached. The possible benefits (more respect, increased desirability to men) outweigh the consequences, especially in a male-dominated society where women’s “independence” is frowned upon. Finding a well-to-do husband/sugar daddy is a priority and women are willing to do what they have to, to fit standards of beauty. The euphemism is “skin-toning” and although “bleaching” is banned, skin-toning is a huge money-maker that I’m sure has lined the pockets of enough politicians to allow it to keep being sold despite international outcry.” Nigerian musician Femi Kuti, son of legendary artist Fela Kuti, says many bleach their skin because they praise Western cultures and products, while dismissing their own.He told Al Jazeera: “An African will prefer to be called John-Philip. If you said your name was Chukwu Emeka Afongkudong they will say you are from the village. You are backward. How can you have such a name? We really look down on our culture and heritage instead of being proud of it.” Skin-bleaching has terrible consequences. Skin burns, rashes, and permanent abrasions are commonplace. Moreover many creams contain toxic levels of mercury, and some include agents that may cause leukemia, and cancer of the liver and kidneys. Despite this, skin-bleaching has become a multibillion-dollar business around the world. Although the practice is rampant in Africa, the industry’s popularity extends far beyond the continent. Nearly 61-percent of skin care products in India contain bleaching agents, and 40-percent of women in China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea admit to bleaching. For her efforts Dencia has been inundated with criticism (and praise) about her skin-toning line via Twitter, but she isn’t fazed. Along with re-tweeting links to mentions of her product, she’s been taking on critics who deride her for promoting and capitalizing on self-hate.

The first trial ever held for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. occurred from November 15 to December 8, 1999 in the Memphis Circuit Court of Judge James E. Swearengen. After hearing seventy witnesses in three and one-half weeks of testimony in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the King family, the twelve jurors (six black and six white) found former Memphis bar-and-grill owner Loyd Jowers guilty of conspiring with "government agencies" to murder Dr. King. At the request of the Kings, whose purpose was not punishment but the truth, the ailing Jowers was fined a symbolic one hundred dollars–to be donated to a Memphis sanitation workers' fund. This historic trial was so ignored by the media that, apart from the courtroom participants, I was the only person who attended it from beginning to end. What I experienced in that courtroom ranged from inspiration at the courage of the Kings, their lawyer-investigator William F. Pepper, and the witnesses, to amazement at the government's carefully interwoven plot to kill Dr. King. The seriousness with which US intelligence agencies planned the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks eloquently of the threat Kingian nonviolence represented to the powers that be in the spring of 1968. At the trial, a series of African-American police officers and firefighters testified how each of them had been pulled from duty in the vicinity of King's room at the Lorraine Motel, and how normal security had been withdrawn from Dr. King in the hours preceding his assassination on April 4, 1968. The Memphis police and fire director responsible for this systematic stripping of King's security was the now-deceased Frank Holloman, a retired FBI agent. During his twenty-five years in the FBI, Holloman had served as head of the Memphis field office and as J. Edgar Hoover's appointments secretary. Eyewitness testimony from King colleagues and neighborhood observers that the assassin's shot had been fired from a heavy growth of bushes directly across from the Lorraine was provided to the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and the FBI immediately after the event. Yet senior Memphis sanitation official Maynard Stiles testified that MPD Inspector Sam Evans ordered him by phone at 7:00 o'clock on the morning after the assassination to assemble a ground crew and cut down those same bushes, thus sanitizing the crime scene. Loyd Jowers confessed to Dexter King and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young that at his Jim's Grill, whose back door opened onto the dense bushes, he had acted as a conduit for a rifle and a pay-off of $100,000. A man named Raul brought the rifle in a box the day before the murder. (Raul, who had been James Earl Ray's shepherd, was identified in a passport photo by Jowers and six other witnesses. While dying in jail, Ray had identified the same photo as the Raul he knew.) Jowers said that seconds after the shot, the still smoking rifle was tossed to him through the back door of Jim's Grill by Lt. Earl Clark, the MPD's best marksman, whom Jowers assumed was the triggerman. In his audiotaped confession, Jowers also said that planning meetings for the assassination had been held at Jim's Grill and included Clark (who died in 1987), undercover MPD officer Marrell McCollough (who would be the first person to reach King's body and is now with the CIA), another police officer, and two men he didn't know but believed were federal agents. A role in the assassination also emerged for the US Army. Carthel Weeden, captain of the fire station across from the Lorraine, testified that he showed two US Amy officers, who indicated they had cameras, to the roof of his station on the morning of King's assassination. Former CIA operative Jack Terrell, a whistle-blower in the Iran-Contra scandal who is now dying in Florida, testified by videotape that his best friend, J.D. Hill, had confessed shortly before his death to having been a member of an Army sniper team assigned, in a contingency plan, to shoot King on April 4 if the shooter in the bushes failed. Douglas Valentine, author of ThePhoenix Program (1990) on the CIA's assassination of thousands of Vietnamese villagers, testified about the redeployment of Phoenix veterans to the Sixties antiwar movement and the King assassination in particular. Two of those intelligence officers, corresponding to the men on the fire station roof, had reportedly photographed the man in the bushes shooting King. Former US Representative Walter Fauntroy testified that "very sophisticated forces" pressured the King investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, so that it reached its James Earl Ray-as-lone-assassin conclusion "without having looked at all the evidence." In an interview, Rev. Fauntroy told me that after his retirement from Congress, he learned from HSCA files that in the three weeks prior to the assassination, FBI Director Hoover had held a series of meetings with CIA and military intelligence Phoenix operatives. He also learned that such intelligence agents were present in Memphis on April 4. When the trial was over, David Morphy, the only juror willing to discuss it publicly, said, "We can look back on it and say that we did change history. But that's not why we did it. It was because there was an overwhelming amount of evidence and just too many odd coincidences." Perhaps the lesson of the King assassination is that our government understands the power of nonviolence better than we do, or better than we want to. As Rev. James Lawson testified, the background necessary for understanding our greatest prophet's murder by his own government was Dr. King's radical opposition to the Vietnam war and his aborted plans for the Poor People's Campaign. King wanted wave after wave of poor people to engage in massive civil disobedience in the nation's capital until the government faced up to the moral imperative of eradicating poverty. "I have no doubt," Lawson said, "that the government viewed all this seriously enough to plan his assassination." Thirty-two years after Memphis, we know that the government that now honors Dr. King with a national holiday also killed him. As will once again become evident when the Justice Department releases the findings of its "limited re-investigation" into King's death, the government is continuing its cover-up–just as it continues to do in the closely related murders of John and Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X. The faithful in a nonviolent movement that hopes to change the distribution of wealth and power in the USA–as Dr. King's vision, if made real, would have done in 1968–should be willing to receive the same kind of reward that King did in Memphis. But as each of our religious traditions has affirmed from the beginning, that recurring story of martyrdom ("witness") is one of ultimate transformation and cosmic good news.Jim Douglass is the author of numerous books, including The Nonviolent Coming of God. His booklet Compassion and the Unspeakable in the Murders of Martin, Malcolm, JFK and RFK is available from FOR for $2.00. Douglass lives in South Birmingham, Alabama.

Hip-hop stars Beyonce, Jay Z and Kanye West may have the power to turn everything they touch into gold but not when it comes to scoring a huge pop hit in 2013. In fact, they and other African-American artists did not have a single No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in all of last year. According to writer Chris Molanphy, who surveys the pop charts, in a piece for Slate, this is the first time this had happened in the Billboard chart ‘s 55 years. It represents a huge contrast to 10 years ago when a person of a color recorded every chart-topping hit. Rather, African-American artists were featured on other artists’ songs last year, such as Rihanna on Eminem’s “The Monster” and T.I. and Pharrell on Robin Thicke’s inescapable summer hit “Blurred Lines.” In a similar role reversal, Molanphy also cited that white artists topped the No. 1 spot on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart in 44 out of the 52 weeks last year. The color omission also applied to this year’s recent inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in which there is not one living African-American artist among them — E Street Band sax player Clarence Clemmons will be posthumously inducted. As for why this is happening, Molanphy wrote: “Music fans are playing out an unironic version of Stephen Colbert’s joke about not seeing color…and yet somehow, when the data is compiled about what we’re all buying and streaming, the Timberlakes and Matherses and Macklemores keep winding up atop the stack, ahead of the Miguels and J. Coles.”

Matisyahu's albums sold 16,000 units in the first week of release

Despite Jamaica's apparent renaissance in Reggae music this year, the island's presence on the Billboard Reggae Albums Chart in the U.S. continues to dwindle as Americans have recently dominated the top 10. In the latest edition of the American magazine's chart, five of the top ten albums are by American Reggae artists, led by California-based Reggae band, Rebelution for their Peace of Mind album. Pennsylvania-born Reggae act, Matisyahu is runner-up for his album, Spark Seeker while Virginia-based band, Soldiers of Jah Army (S.O.J.A) is third with Strength To Survive. Two other American acts, Josh Heinrichs (Rooftop Session EP) from Missouri and Fiji (Born and Raised II – The Rebirth) from Hawaii round out the top 10 at nine and 10 respectively. This is the third straight week at least half of Billboard's Reggae charts were albums from American Reggae acts. Only two solo Reggae albums from Jamaican acts are on the list: Jimmy Cliff's Grammy-award winning project, Rebirth at number six and Beres Hammond's new album, One Love, One Life at number eight. Marley: The Original Soundtrack and Reggae Gold 2012 are the only other Jamaican Reggae albums on the list at fourth and seventh respectively. Bermudan act, Mishka is the only act outside Jamaica and the U.S. on Billboard's Reggae albums chart with Ocean IS My Potion at number six. These latest figures are concerning, considering 2012 releases within the U.S from prominent Jamaican Reggae acts such as Romain Virgo (The System), I-Octane(Cry To The Nation), Busy Signal (Reggae Music Again) and Sean Paul (Tomahawk Techniques. However, none of them returned favourable end-of-year numbers, selling less than 5,000 units each, according to Nielsen Soundscan. By comparison, Rebelution and Matisyahu's albums sold 16,000 units in the first week of their releases in January and July respectively.